I am continuing the series of posts - Something New I’m Doing This Year.
As an artist and a storyteller, I am always searching for new ways to tell stories. There is a freedom to having many tools at one’s disposal, especially ones that are yet to be discovered. That is where the adventure lies. It is that place where fear and creativity meet and enchantment takes over. The only way to discover these new tools for me, is to experiment and push the limits. I love to learn new mediums and storytelling formats. It’s intoxicating.
I admit that stories often flood my imagination each having their own way that they want to be told. Stories are often stubborn. They have a mind of their own. They won’t be shoehorned into the medium of my choice. I approach writing like I approach teaching. I listen. When these stories come aknockin. I try my best to put them into their requested form: board book, picture book, graphic novel, YA novel, etc.
This year, I have pushed myself to add some new forms, formats and mediums to my repertoire. As an artist I love to learn the medium and its rules well so I can break them or combine mediums and formats to create new ways to tell stories.
I am learning to paint with oil paints and thinking about how I can push the medium by collaging on top of the still life paintings. I’m still getting the oil painting down. It was great to take a class at Otis College of Art and Design. I also see some water color classes in my near future.
Inspired by my fellow bloggers, I have flirted with poetry writing (adult themes), taking workshops at the longtime literary arts center, Beyond Baroque in Venice California. Beyond Baroque was founded in 1968. They have an amazing creative culture dedicated to poetry, literature and art. For those of you into Punk Rock, here’s a fun fact: Exene Cervenka and John Doe, of the band X, met at the long running Wednesday night poetry workshop in the mid 70’s. The Wednesday Poetry Workshop still happens online in addition to a Monday night Fiction Workshop also online.
click here for more information about Beyond Baroque
Executive Director Jimmy Vega
Existence ArchivedWhen all is said and done,
All that remains
Are the cockroaches
Humans are arrogant.
We know we’re at the end
Our existence limited
Our time running out
For those who measure time
Cockroaches don’t
They live in the present
Our days are numbered
Data yet to be collected
But we know it
Intuitively
We know it,
The signs are there
Refusal to fade into oblivion
We have the technology to prevent this
To prove we were here
To prove we mattered
To prove it wasn’t all for nothing
Refusal to disappear,
Refusal to be forgotten
We madly archive our existence
Synthetic humans
Hold our place
In time and space
Generative AI
Generative extinction
We hate the cockroaches
They’ve always been here.
Survived before
Will survive beyond our wildest dreams
Dreams and thinking gone…
Sucked into devices
Sucked onto digital highways
Archived for later
The cockroaches don’t care.
They just don’t.
Erasure hurts.
By Zeena M. Pliska
With a few poems under my belt, I recently mustered up my confidence and even read for the first time at The Book Jewel, a local independent bookstore.
I am becoming more proficient in the art of filmmaking. Recently, I participated in a 72-hour film challenge, producing, writing, and directing a short film that we’re preparing to submit to small, local film festivals.
Rough Edit of Don't Assume short film
I’m also learning to combine my newfound skill of poetry writing and filmmaking to create poetry videos. My visual art in the past has always combined images and text. I love adding moving pictures and sound to poetry, to create a different genre that pushes my storytelling to a new level.
All these newfound creative endeavors add to my kidlit writing in ways that I feel give it more breadth and depth, bringing cinematic writing to the table. It also gives me new angles, avenues, and perspectives to approach new story themes. It feels expansive.
My life as an artist/storyteller runs parallel to my life as a teacher of 4 and 5-year-olds. I utilize a Reggio -Inspired Approach in my public-school classroom (in Los Angeles).
The approach comes from Reggio Emilia, Italy. One of the components of this approach are the many uses of “languages.”
THE HUNDRED LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN
NO WAY. THE HUNDRED IS THERE
The child is made of one hundred.
The child has a hundred languages, a hundred hands, a hundred thoughts, a hundred ways of thinking, of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred ways of listening, of marveling, of loving, a hundred joys for singing, and understanding, a hundred worlds to discover, a hundred worlds to invent, a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred, hundred, hundred more) but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture separate the head from the body.
They tell the child: to think without hands, to do without head, to listen, and not to speak, to understand without joy, to love and to marvel only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child: to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child: that work and play, reality and fantasy, science and imagination, sky and earth, reason and dream, are things that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there.
The child says: No way. The hundred is there. - Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Languages are defined as a multitude of materials that students use to communicate like paint, clay, wire, beads, recycled materials, natural materials, blocks, music, etc. When I was first exploring and learning this approach, I spent a couple of days at a school in Portland, Oregon called the Opal School. It was a public school that used the Reggio- Inspired Approach in a K-5 setting. Unfortunately, the school has since closed but the lessons I learned in my observations remain almost 2 decades later.
I observed an amazing use of the Reggio-Inspired Approach that engaged students in storytelling using different “languages” (mediums). They called it Story Workshop. It has influenced the way I approach story crafting with my young students.
In my class, we use different “languages” to tell stories.
After they have developed their story in different “languages”, they make books. Because they don’t “write” yet, we write their words for them. We go through this process every day. I find that it builds strong story crafters and writers. Writing becomes effortless (developmentally appropriate) because it is tied to story and story is tied to the experimentation of different materials and not limited by format.
For me, I find that pushing the limits as an artist/writer makes my work more dynamic. It gives me possibilities that would not necessarily emerge if I was confined to one way of telling stories. I hope I am passing this down to my young students so that they develop as writers also not confined to the page in prescribed and uninteresting ways. I hope that it habituates the creative process in their story crafting endeavors and keeps their writing fresh.
By Zeena M. Pliska
Author of
Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story
Egyptian Lullaby
Chicken Soup for the Soul for Babies Say Thank You? (But Why?)
Chicken Soup for the Soul for Babies A Gift For Me? (I Want It!)
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